Best of El Planeta 2011

Choosing
a side in the ongoing Boca Grande vs. Anna's Taqueria vs. Chipotle vs. Qdoba
burrito war is a great step toward figuring out your dinner plans, but not the
best way to get exposed to Boston's
Latino culture. Fortunately, El Planeta newspaper has a cheatsheet for the
uninitiated, in the form of their Best of El Planeta 2011. The full 97-item list, the
product of the area's only "Best Of" poll focused on the Latino community, is
available via TuBoston.com, but here are some
highlights:

Best Taquería in an
Unusual Location | Villa México: Gas station snacks are no longer limited
to 7-11 taquitos of indeterminate vintage and equally mysterious contents.
You can fill up more than your car at Grampy's Gas Station in Beacon
Hill; tucked away inside the unassuming shop is a small takeout counter serving some of Boston's best burritos
and other authentic, homemade Mexican food.

Best Summer
Installation in Boston | The Big Hammock: Architect Hansy
Better Barraza may be the first person to understand what should be an obvious
principle: the bigger the yard, the bigger the hammock. For a hammock
commensurate with the size of the 15-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway,
that means using 4278 feet of rope to create the what was definitively the world's largest hammock and potentially the world's comfiest
piece of public art.

Best Hispanic Soap
Opera | La Reina del Sur, Telemundo: The runners-up in this category
include a show in which a wealthy dance student is frozen in a cryogenic
capsule, and another that revolves around illegitimate pregnancies and
mysterious diseases in the fashion industry. But it's the saga of Teresa Mendoza's rise to infamy as a
drug dealer that has kept viewers glued since the first episode, the
most-watched in Telemundo history.

Best Local Psychic| Sra. Lupe:
You can keep Googling "dream interpretation websites" until you find one
that looks more legitimate than a mid-90s Geocities homepage (which you won't),
and you can harass your friends to analyze your fortune cookies every time you
get takeout (which they won't). Or you can call a professional who guarantees
results.